International Law

"Clearly, the sky is falling. The question now is how many people will be left to cover it."

In the New York Times David Carr chronicles the demise of old media:

Stop and think about where you are reading this column. If you are one of the million or so people who are reading it in a newspaper that landed on your doorstop or that you picked up at the corner, you are in the minority. This same information is available to many more millions on this paper?s Web site, in RSS feeds, on hand-held devices, linked and summarized all over the Web.

Historically, people took an interest in the daily paper about the time they bought a home. Now they are checking their BlackBerrys for alerts about mortgage rates.

?The auto industry and the print industry have essentially the same problem,? said Clay Shirky, the author of ?Here Comes Everybody.? ?The older customers like the older products and the new customers like the new ones.?

For readers, the drastic diminishment of print raises an obvious question: if more people are reading newspapers and magazines, why should we care whether they are printed on paper?

The answer is that paper is not just how news is delivered; it is how it is paid for.

More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry?s revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day. A single newspaper ad might cost many thousands of dollars while an online ad might only bring in $20 for each 1,000 customers who see it.

The difference between print dollars and digital dimes ? or sometimes pennies ? is being taken out of the newsrooms that supply both. And while it is indeed tough all over in this economy, consider the consequences.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on October 30, 2008 (boomark / email).